Nice, Paulo!

- Ed

In this same section of the text Valens makes a very interesting comment:

Quote:
Each place, then, properly produces what it signifies, but also the nature of the place of the diametrical sign cooperates

Are you finding this interesting because the axial semantic system widely employed these days, although quite different to Valens, was a departure from the way house meanings had been formulated from the ascendent before Valens? Is Valens significantly deviating from his predecessors here?

There are a few puzzles, for me. Community would now be initially looked at across the 5th/11th axis and Valens has this in the 2nd, 5th and 9th. Retribution might be explored through the 2nd/8th axis and Valens has it in the 4th.
Authority in the 3rd whereas today across the 4th/10th. Manner of living in the 2nd. No idea what this means or where we would start today with this. Maybe the Ascendent but also the house position of the Sun and Moon. Or again the 5th/11th axis, as manners are a mixture of personal dispositons and social conditioning.

Nixx wrote:There are a few puzzles, for me. Community would now be initially looked at across the 5th/11th axis and Valens has this in the 2nd, 5th and 9th. Retribution might be explored through the 2nd/8th axis and Valens has it in the 4th.
Authority in the 3rd whereas today across the 4th/10th. Manner of living in the 2nd. No idea what this means or where we would start today with this. Maybe the Ascendent but also the house position of the Sun and Moon. Or again the 5th/11th axis, as manners are a mixture of personal dispositons and social conditioning.

Nixx, if you allow me to jump in...

I'd point that, although we relate authority to the 10th, the 10th is primarily a place of eminence and enforcement. Now, eminenence may come alongside true authority, but they are not quite the same thing. I'm not sure if Valens, or other previous authors, consciously made this distinction, but if we look at the 3rd/9th axis, we could infer that:

The 9th was called Theos and the 3rd Thea. The autorithy that emanates from the 9th was a divine one, and the very reason why the 9th was cadent is because we are distant from the God housed in the 9th. Still, the 9th aspects the rising sign, pointing that our very life is a blessing from above. It is reasonable to say that the 3rd could house authority of a mundane kind, knowing how the Moon had there her Joy, and she reigning over the material world. But I'm not sure if this authority could be translated as similar to a king's authority, but rather, I'd translate it as a magisterial authority, a knowledge not attainable without a journey of the body or of the mind, or even both, in order to unravel the secrets of the material world. Following authors could come and try to clear out this, and the evolving of the concept may be a slowly attained consensus on what is therein housed in Goddess. These revisions or adding ups are not necessarily made on an arrogant whim. Hence, today the 3rd is the formal, technical knowledge, while the 9th is the higher, philosophical one.

About retribution on the 4th, the 4th is the foundation of the chart. Everything starts there. Our fathers rear us to life so that we can cycle all the way up to the 5th, and after our passing it will be our children to become a new foundation to their own. The same soil into which we plant the seeds, is the soil where we will harvest, the place where we erect our houses is the place where we rise up to life. Although the 2nd/8th are steps in the process that shows what is due to us according to a given moment, the 4th is the final sum, where both beggining and ending of each cycle intersects.

The other points you made are a bit more elusive, though I find there is reason behind those associations as well.

Paulo, Thanks for your information!

I follow your line of reasoning, but wonder why the 7th house then logically follows from the 8th as the "house of death" in a clock-wise system. Obviously the 7th as the place of the setting sun, is closer to the passage to the underworld than is the 8th, yet it shows up as a much more favourable house. Not to mention that the 6th, when defined, is usually associated with illnesses.

The bad associations of the 6th, 8th, and 12th houses, are usually associated with their not forming a major aspect with the ascendant, but one would think that in a solar-based house system, the 12th would be pretty good, as the sun ascends after dawn.

Dorotheus (Carmen Astrologicum, 1st century AD section I: v, p. 164 in the Pingree translation) gives the topic and rank order of the houses from best to worst as:

1. AS
2. MC
3. 11th house "then what follows the midheaven, which is the 11th from the ascendant" [counter-clockwise order?]
4. 5th "house of the child"
5. 7th "then the opposite to the ascendant, which is the sign of marriage"
6. 4th "then the cardine of the earth"
7. 9th "then the ninth place from the ascendant."

He says the above are the good houses, followed, in order, by the "not as good" places:

8. 3rd house "the third place from the ascendant because it is said that it is the joy of the moon"
9. 2nd house "the second from the ascendant"
10. "then the eighth from the ascendant, which is the sign of death"

"There remain equal to this two places, which are the worst of the worst. They are the sixth and the "twelfth." Their conventional rank-order would be:
11. 6th house
12. 12th house.

Some of these rank-orders appear linked by an axis, but some do not.

Then elsewhere in Dorotheus, we get different thematic contents for the houses. In IV: 1 (p. 261) for example, we get children associated with the 10th house. and the 7th house is both the "house of marriage" and the house of old age (as is the 4th) which strangely come after the house of death as #8 in a clockwise system. In this section Dorotheus deals strictly with the "cardines" but we almost get a hint of a very simple quadrant system.

Elsewhere in the book (V:13. p. 270) We find thematic house contents being used very freely depending upon the nature of the question. The angular houses take on various meanings.

For example, if the astrologer's client wishes to free a slave, the master is the ascendant, the 7th is the slave, the 10th "house of government" indicates the reason for freeing the slave, and "the house of the fathers (the fourth) indicates the outcome of the matter."

If someone wishes to undertake a journey, the traveller is the ascendant, the destination is the 7th house, the reason for the trip is found in the house of government (10th) and the outcome of the trip is in the 4th "house of the fathers." (V: 21, p. 278)

It all sounds a bit like horary astrology, except that horary apparently was not practiced by this early date.

This mix-and-match strategy makes logical sense in a way, if indeed, Dorotheus was primarily compiling information from various sources and did not wish to exclude anything that might be useful; as his translator stated in my previous post. In many cultures, it would have been a practice's antiquity and association with royalty that would have given it credibility, more so than the latest hot new method. But it is hard to argue for a concise, systematic Hellenistic astrology from this kind of astrological buffet table.

Well waybread, you raise what I find to be complex points, but I feel that we must break down elements that could define what subjects falls under each house in order to properly comprehend their final sum, hence my axial analysis sugestion. Some matters are congenial to certain places while others feel misplaced, and that is the first thing one would have to notice, before going over into small detail. Concision would not steam from an exact, down to every word repetition of meanings, cause meaning can be infinitely varied, but from a broader, but still valid relation, and also considering that every author produces a synthesis in the final presentation of a house's general meaning (among other matters) and hopefully there would be some common ground to be found somewhere.

First, I'd like to say that there is sure trouble when you think that some meanings could steam from an anti-clock wise rationale against a clock-wise one, and it is even harder to figure out if, in the case of Dorotheus, he was just telling us the place in anti-clock wise manner because it is more natural to find the place mentioned that way, or because he really meant it from a symbolical perspective, combining celestial house meanings with mundane house meanings, or something like that.

Making a brief digression from the subject, one doubt that ate me away for some time was related to how there could be a sudden change of elements seemingly mismatched, in the same quadrant, as from cardinal fire (Aries) followed by fixed earth (Taurus) and so on, for example. At some point I abandoned the view that the zodiac and astrology was build to be reflective of exactly what was happening in the natural world (the planetary motions and so forth) and "accepted" it leaned more onto a symbolical presentation of its elements.

Then, the signs that represents each season trine themselves, because each season lasts for aproximately 3 months, and 3 represented as in a triangle, comprises internal harmony, fire being spring, water summer, air autumn and earth winter, and these, respected their modalities, holding similar values among themselves. The fact that the square is aligned with the actual changing of a season would then reveal itself to be sort of coincidental. Each figure that was formed, the triangle, square and so on are actually on its entirety an abstract representation much like the platonic solids are held to be. By the same token, a quadrant did not represent a season through each of the signs present in it, but through the passage of cardinal change to cardinal change.

So, when there is no figure formed, there is no generation of anything at all, and as a semi-sextile does not form a change within itself (30? is just inside the brink of change) and the inconjunction can not be linked to the completion of any actual cycle, they depict the lack of relation known to places that are adjacent to a given sign, or adjacent to the opposite one.

But getting back to the matter, I too would find that the 12th would be a good place, because it follows the rising sign. But that is why I take aversion deadly serious on my practical work with astrology. It seems to me that few conditions are worse than aversion, because nothing comes to fruition when there is aversion.

I also tend to disagree, to an extent, with the way that are presented most lists of what are the good houses and what are the bad ones, because this "good" is not very clearly defined. Is it good because it is just good? Or because it is prolific, leading to easy fruition?

If you asked me, I'd subscribe to the jyotish idea that the 9th is the best house. Surely, it is cadent, but it houses that which is above all else... still, most authors, in order to determine what house would be better, seems to consider both the angular strength of the house alongside it's meaning. If it was purely by qualitative meaning, not necessarily in order of beneficence, the good houses would be, in my humble opinon, the 1st, 10th, 11th, 5th, 9th and 3rd, while the bad ones would be 7th, 4th, 2nd, 8th, 6th and 12th (I'd add that the 12th is worse of than the 6th only because it is a public house, so she adds public disgrace to its meanings, whereas the 6th does not). But as we know, the cadency of some houses takes away their power (we being distant from the divine, being corrupted beings, could not exercise this intrinsic divine nature properly, so both Thea and Theos are hardly attainable and valued on their full bloom in this world of limitation). Hence, the synthesizing I've mentioned before, where happiness and goodness are allocated together to form a definition for "strong houses" that has both goodness and power within it, of which Dorotheus list is a perfect example.

Returning to the matter "house and their subjects", some of the relations pointed by you in Dorotheus, appear in a likemanner to what we see in Ptolemy, like the linking of 10th whith children. That is akin to the relation of 10th with marriage. Marriage and children conceived are related to the 10th, in my opinion, in a broader sense than when we relate them to the 5th/11th or 1st/7th. They were events of social recognition, specially on families of noble ascendence. Even today this rule holds to a certain degree. There are also multiple symbolic meanings even when we consider natural significators, take children for example: Jupiter (fertility), Mercury (early age, representing children as the follower of the Moon in the chaldaic order) the Moon herself (because she holds the generational principle) and even Venus (also conected with happiness and fertility). Strange would be to consider Saturn for children, except by accidental significance (ruling the 5th/11th). This idea is present in relation to dignities as well, where we see that planets can be both in debility and dignity at the same time, or having a distressing condition while fighting it of through borrowed strength.

So, the 8th is representative of death because it shows the running out of life's strength, just as the 7th, being a place of descension, is also a place of death, alongside those elements that openly opposes us. According to Deb's book, the 8th was more representative of the "beggining of death", while the 7th would be it's actualization. This could have various philosofical implications. While in the 8th we see the process unravelling, the 7th implies that the matter at hand is now going into obscurity. In an actual case, we could say that something dies in the 8th while on the 7th it fades from memory, being finally "buried" on the 4th. Also, some cycles are faster in their development than others, so, it may take from a transit of the Moon to a 900 years specific conjunction or more, for a matter to complete these steps. But the symbolical notion holds, in that the 8th actually cuts the light off, while the 7th still receives light from the rising sign, and therein is the idea of "others" as opposed to "self" in the 7th, and while it contains a symbolical meaning related to death and old age, it also contains the promise of complementarity, adding up, to the same place, things that are good and bad. The same idea is present in the 4th and 10th houses, where contrariety steams from the square figure, but the exercise of power and security emanates from these because they are foundation and zenith.

So, as you said on the final part of your post, there is a mix and match present in these texts, and every idea deserves some scrutiny to see how they hold up, when we get past the initial, often stunning surprise.

Hi Mark

You did a very good job of diggin into the mystery of the Thema Mundi

There are some issues though.

Now Valens restores the 5th place to its more normal role as the house of children.

Normal as compared to what? If you take this in chronological order, the Greek/Valens/other authors assignments come first. Wouldn't they then be the 'normal' roles, and the others deviations?

Marriage is assigned to the more conventional place of the 7th house.

Again: what is conventional, what comes first or what comes second?

What one needs to do here is to try to understand why these assignments where given to these places. Now whenever one tries to associate the ABC to housecontent, it doesn't work.
Friends get assigned to no less than 5 places/houses (if I'm not mistaken), children get assigned to (about) 4 places/houses. The point is that you need to explain why this was the case and why it was 'logical'.
For this, one can find good explanations in the article 'The Facets of Fate', by Robert Schmidt.

Another interesting lead is to seen what you get when you associate the Thema Mundi with the signs where planets have exaltations, and see what happens.

Here's a clue: Schmidt, Definitions and Foundations, page 111-112:

"Now, as we will learn in BOOK II of the ANTIOCHUS SUMMARY, the thema mundi, or hypothetical chart for the creation of the cosmos, has the Crab rising. The Crab is itself the exaltation of Zeus; the remaining exaltations, then, are all images that are connected with the Crab hexagonally, tetragonally, trigonally, or diametrically.

... In the commentary about planetary domiciles, I made an argument that the assignment of domiciles might be based on the places where the planets make their stations or other special figures in relation to H?lios. If that is correct, we might regard H?lios as the dispenser of domiciles. It is then tempting to regard S?len? as the dispenser of exaltations, because it takes the Crab as its own domicile and all the exaltation images are in standard configurations with the Crab. This is true of no other planet. In terms of exaltations the domicile of H?lios, for instance, is only configured with the Ram (its own exaltation), the Bull (the exaltation of S?len?), and the Balance (the exaltation of Kronos)."

PFN,

Perhaps the Online Etymology Dictionary can help here.

authority
early 13c., autorite "book or quotation that settles an argument," from O.Fr. auctorit? "authority, prestige, right, permission, dignity, gravity; the Scriptures" (12c.; Mod.Fr. autorit?), from L. auctoritatem (nom. auctoritas) "invention, advice, opinion, influence, command," from auctor "master, leader, author" (see author). Usually spelled with a -c- in English till 16c., when it was dropped in imitation of the French. Meaning "power to enforce obedience" is from late 14c.; meaning "people in authority" is from 1610s. Authorities "those in charge, those with police powers" is recorded from mid-19c.

The usual way authority is employed today to describe power, influence, status, prestige and so forth, according to this, may have evolved in the 13c?

So your suggestion Valens may be using the term to ??unravel the secrets of the material world?? is offered some support from the 12c meaning.

Valens meaning for the 9th resonates with the way the word authority is used today, as I think you indicate. But the term is not in this list directly. These types of authority such as Gods, Kings, Astrologers, Oracles, Prophesies have, thankfully, less power in many parts of the world now.

retribution
late 14c., "repayment," from L. retributionem (nom. retributio) "recompense, repayment," from retributus, pp. of retribuere "hand back, repay," from re- "back" + tribuere "to assign, allot" (see tribute). Sense of "evil given for evil done" is from day of retribution (1520s) in Christian theology, the time of divine reward or punishment.

Similar to today?s justice, revenge or trying to put something right. I don?t follow how you link this to our inheritance, roots or foundations. Are you suggesting in Valens time the role of the father was to somehow put something right?

Hi PFN and Nixx

Please refer the article 'Facets of Fate' which gives ample reasons how the 9th got the signification it has.
The 9th draws or pulls the 10th over the top. When the 10th is understood as (ones) 'action' as a sort of travelling through life, then the 9th is by necessity that whicht guides the native in his actions/travelling through life.

The father was traditionally the head of the household, and as such he 'layed down the rules', right?
And what function do the 10 commandments have other than guiding us in our travel through life (10th)? Laying down the basic rules so to say? As any religion does?

And if you do not now what the exact bounds of conduct are in your travelling through your life, is then not the police, or ultimately the justicesystem, responsible for laying down the rules of conduct, and the punishment for any transgression?

What's the purpose of a(ny) philosophy, and any form of education?

Isn't an oracle or an astrological advice or any form of divination meant to offer guidance, something to use as a guide on the path you are travelling?

Oooooh...

Hermes wrote: The father was traditionally the head of the household, and as such he 'layed down the rules', right?
And what function do the 10 commandments have other than guiding us in our travel through life (10th)? Laying down the basic rules so to say? As any religion does?

And if you do not now what the exact bounds of conduct are in your travelling through your life, is then not the police, or ultimately the justicesystem, responsible for laying down the rules of conduct, and the punishment for any transgression?

Hermes,

Here you appear to be suggesting Valens's 'authority' ought to have been linked to the 4th, not the 3rd. So can you speculate as to why it was listed in the 3rd house in 1CE, for Valens at least?

Is Schmidt's article available online?

Ultimately the super-ego lays down the rules of conduct, albeit mitigated and infused by any societal boundaries or systems, such as the Law and its implementers. The super-ego or behavioural boundaries would initially be explored by focusing on the 10th/4th, as well as the Sun and Saturn. So 'father' is very much a factor both in a more archetypal and literal sense. In this, perhaps more modern semantic arrangement, the 4th/10th axis is where ones dynamics and experiences with authority are found in the houses. Thus my continued fascination with this 3rd house finding.

Hi Nixx

Here you appear to be suggesting Valens's 'authority' ought to have been linked to the 4th, not the 3rd. So can you speculate as to why it was listed in the 3rd house in 1CE, for Valens at least?

No, Valens said the father was a topic of the 9th, and that can be differentiated from the father as one of the parents (the 4th). The 9th has another function.
He also said, with other Greek authors, that the 3rd was Dea, godess, and also the mother. Why? because she's 'the mistress of the household'. So she lays down the rules in the home, as opposed to laying down rules in the Polis (9th).

Ultimately the super-ego lays down the rules of conduct, albeit mitigated and infused by any societal boundaries or systems, such as the Law and its implementers.

Super-ego? No, its your daimon who does this. The 11th is the good daimon, the 12th the bad daimon, the 1st is YOUR daimon.

Your line of reasoning is way to modern for me
Your trying to reconstruct housemeanings from a field of knowledge that has nothing to do with the foundations of astrology.
This will lead you astray (as it did me).

PFN,

Perhaps the Online Etymology Dictionary can help here.

Valens meaning for the 9th resonates with the way the word authority is used today, as I think you indicate. But the term is not in this list directly. These types of authority such as Gods, Kings, Astrologers, Oracles, Prophesies have, thankfully, less power in many parts of the world now.

It would not take too much imagination to interpret Kings in a modern sense if you cannot imagine the past. As for "thankfully" that it a matter of opinion. Mind you, If someone starts by looking up a word in a dictionary I would not take the post too seriously.

Try not to be so literal

Regards

Matthew

Mathew,

When you are seeking to probe into the functioning of a homo sapiens mind 2,000 years ago you need to penetrate into the language of the time. This tool shapes our thinking processes. So unless you consult a good dictionary you will likely go round in ever confusing circles. By all means check out this assertion with a Philosopher, Linguist, Psychologist, Anthropologist or Historian. Or even Robert Schmidt.